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Virginia Tech hosts Appalachian Studies Film Series

BLACKSBURG, Va., Sept. 13, 2005 – The Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Tech is hosting a series of notable artistic and documentary films which touch upon issues common to all Appalachians. Each film offers critical insights into the composition of Appalachian identities and cultures. Faculty in Virginia Tech’s Appalachian Studies Program will introduce each film and respond to comments or questions after each film.

Films will be shown Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. in 3100 Torgersen Hall, located on the Virginia Tech campus. The film series is free and open to the public, and is as follows:

==> Sept. 21: “Last of the Mohicans” (moderator: Sam Cook, associate professor, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies). Movie adaptation of Cooper's book by the same name. Setting is upstate New York in the 1790s, but was filmed in western North Carolina.

==> Sept. 28: “Journey of August King” (moderator: Emily Satterwhite, assistant professor, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies). A film of a white man's discovery of the "humanness" of an African slave woman.

==> Oct. 5: “Matewan” (moderator: Sam Cook).A John Sayles’ film on the West Virginia mine wars of the 1920s and a labor union organizer who comes to an embattled mining community which is violently dominated by the mining company.

==> Oct. 12: “Wild River” (moderator: Anita Puckett). A Tennessee Valley Authority representative comes to oversee the building of a damn on the Tennessee River in Alabama and learns about different values toward land.

==> Oct. 26: “Wrong Turn” (moderator: Emily Satterwhite). Deliverance's theme taken to the absurd, this horror movie is set somewhere in West Virginia where a band of inbred murderers seek out young non-locals for fun and blood lust.

==> Nov. 2: “Fast Food Women” (moderator: Barbara Ellen Smith, professor, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies). An Appalshop documentary on the hardships that coalfield Appalachian women face when working in the fast food industry is one of a very few choices of employment.

==> Nov. 9: “People Like Us” (moderator: Anita Puckett). A documentary on social class in America which is notable in its depiction of the upper classes as well as rural and urban working and middle classes across racial boundaries.